Chapter Four

Wahini was laying over too far. I could feel it even below decks, and as soon as I could, I disengaged myself from Raven, put on a sweater under my oilskins, and went on deck. Once I let Wahini fall another point off the wind, the pressure on her storm trysail eased and her masts came back closer to perpendicular.

I watched her and felt her motions for a while. She was still laboring. Even under that single small sail, she was sailing too fast. Her broad, blunt bow was crashing into the waves, sending shudders through her massive hull, and showers of spray cascading over the decks.

The wind was force eight and still rising. I released the lashings on the wheel and eased her into the wind as she approached the next wave. This time she took it obliquely, slid sideways as she went up the back of the wave, and slipped down the far side with a twisting, corkscrew motion.

For the next hour I steered her over the waves, letting her slip away to lessen their force. Eventually, I had to take down the last sail, change course, and run her off under bare poles. The masts and rigging alone were enough to carry her downwind as fast as I dared to let her go.

Once Raven stuck her head out of the hatch, looked around her, and slammed the hatch closed again. I didn’t blame her.

Wahini was not a typical yacht. She was a replica of Captain Joshua Slocum’s Spray, built to plans reproduced by Pete Culler.  Slocum had been the first man to sail around the world alone in 1895, and ever since, dreamers have been building replicas of his ship.

I had inherited my Wahini, left half-built in the corner of a trucking yard in the industrial district of San Francisco. When I had first seen her there, forlorn and abandoned, I had been bitten by the same sea fever. Over the next three years, Will Hayden and I had finished and launched her.

Slocum had twenty years of experience as a professional seaman when he circled the globe, but even still, he and the Spray had gone missing on a later voyage. The original Spray had been too shoal, too wide, and inadequately ballasted for her length and sail plan. She was extremely stable, up to a point, but if she lay too far over, she would just keep going until she reached her new position of stability – upside down.

When I inherited the Wahini, I had known none of this. By the time I found out, it was to late. I was committed. So I stayed at the wheel for the next fourteen hours, corkscrewing up and down the waves, and worrying.

#          #          #

Exhaustion, the pounding, twisting, heaving motion of the Wahini, the howl of the wind, an unseasonable cold punctuated by salt spray working its way down from the neck of my oilskins, drove all thought of Raven from my mind. But even fear can become numbed in time. By the third hour I was flogging my mind to remain on task; by the fourth my responses had become automatic while I dreamed awake. more tomorrow

She couldn’t kick in the tight dress, so she drove her spike heel into Davis’ instep, dodged Weasel, and ran forward. Davis and Weasel followed. It was fifty feet to the mesh half-gate. Within two steps, she knew she wouldn’t make it. They caught her, each one grabbing an arm, and she screamed. She got a good breath and screamed again, louder, until Weasel clamped his hand over her mouth and began pawing her. Davis pushed Weasel off and said, “There’s no time for that now.”

Davis twisted Raven’s arm up behind her back and shoved her against the rail. She could see the water rushing by forty feet below. Then they all heard the sound of the heavy steel door opening behind them.

Davis spun Raven around and threw his arms around her.

An old couple stepped out onto the deck and stopped. Raven tried to cry out, but Davis’ arms crushed the breath out of her.

The old man took them for lovers. He said, “Sorry,” with a wry smile, and pulled the door shut behind him as he retreated into the ship.

Davis spun her around, slamming her against the rail, and reached down to grab her thigh and tip her over. That was the part I saw, captured as an afterimage while Raven fell.

“I never fainted,” Raven said. “I never lost consciousness. I remember every foot of that fall – the water frothing out ten feet from the side of the ship and rushing up to get me. If I live to be a hundred, I’ll never forget that fall. I thought, ‘Just let me break my neck and die. Don’t let me drown.’ But reflexes took over; I straightened out at the last moment and went in clean.”

#          #          #

Raven had to stop her story. She had my hand in a death grip.  Wahini was pitching and rolling and groaning around us, but she took no notice of that. She was too lost in the memory of fear.

“The water was cold. I had thought it would be warm. When I went under, I could hear the throb of the propellers and I tried to swim away from the ship to avoid them. I couldn’t move my legs in that damned dress, so I peeled it over my head and kicked off my shoes. The sound was all around me – terrifying.  It scared me more than drowning and I swam straight out until I thought my lungs would burst before I came up for air.

“When I did come up, I couldn’t scream. I had used up all my air, and I could barely get a breath. The ship was rushing by, not fifty feet in front of me. I could see couples leaning on the rail above me, staring into the darkness. They never saw me. I tried to scream and just squeaked. It was horrible. It was worse than anything else that had happened. Seeing the ship roll by, seeing those people staring out over my head, and I couldn’t even call out to them. Then they were gone, the ship was gone, and I was alone.”

She came into my arms, sobbing, struck wordless by the horror of being left alone in the water as the ship rolled on uncaring into the empty ocean night. I braced my legs against the opposite transom and held her tight against the rolling of the ship and the trembling of her body. I could imagine dimly how it might have felt. Falling overboard is a constant danger to singlehanded sailors, and a reason to never go on deck at sea without safety harness. I could too easily imagine what it would be like to fall off Wahini and see her sail away, unmanned and uncaring.

I could imagine it, but Raven had gone through it. That would be a whole different story.

There were no words to comfort her. I simply held her. more tomorrow

“I didn’t see Davis again until the next day, after the ship sailed. We left Bermuda at four PM. He was in the dining room when I went in at seven for dinner. I ignored him, but he came up during the meal and apologized for seeming rude on the island. He said he had been a little drunk. But that was a lie. He was cold sober on the island, and he was cold sober when he threw me into the ocean!”

Her eyes were burning. I decided that if I were James (the Cat?) Davis, I would take care not to fall into her hands.

“I went back to my cabin after that. I wasn’t having much fun on board. Most of the other passengers were middle-aged or older. I should have flown to Bermuda. Anyway, after an hour I started to get stir crazy, so I went down to a lounge and watched the old folks dance a while, and then went to the movie. After the movie, I went for a walk on deck. By that time, I had forgotten all about Davis.”

But Davis had not forgotten about her. From the lounge, she had gone up two decks by an inside stairway, in the direction of her cabin. She saw Davis following her. It spooked her, so she turned aside into the duty-free shop. After he passed, she followed him and found him in front of her cabin.

Raven began to get scared. She didn’t want to confront him by herself, so she turned to get a ship’s officer. She never had the chance. Her second assailant, a slim, weasel faced man she had not seen before, was waiting to cut her off. He stood at the head of the stairs, not saying a word.

Raven turned left and went out of the heavy steel doors to the deck. She was above and forward of the main promenade where all the after-dance couples were strolling. Here the deck was narrow and slick with spray, with lifeboats every few meters.

The door wouldn’t latch. There was no other door letting out onto that small section of deck, only a narrow ladder forward leading up to the crew’s area. It was closed off by a waist high, steel mesh gate. Raven headed toward it just as the door behind her opened. Davis and his dark shadow came through.

“That was when I made my worst mistake,” Raven said. “I should have run like hell and crawled over that half-gate. But it seemed so melodramatic that I just couldn’t do it. I was scared silly, but at the same time I couldn’t believe I was in any real danger. Nothing that harsh words and a slapped face wouldn’t put a stop to. The second man being there should have warned me, but it was the kind of thing that never happens to real people.”

She shook her head .  “If you hadn’t been there, that would have been my last thought as I drowned.  ‘This sort of thing doesn’t happen to real people.'”

I reached across and took her hand. She jumped, then relaxed and finished her story.

Davis said, “What are you running from?” She told him to get out of the way. He just shook his head, and his weasel-faced shadow said, “Not ’til we’ve had some fun and done our job.”

Then Davis grabbed her arm, hard, while Weasel moved up beside her. She was dressed in a thin, clinging dress that half-bound her knees, and left her feeling vulnerable. For a moment she submitted to Davis’ grip on her arm, frozen by the shock of what was happening to her. Davis said, “Time for a swim.”

Weasel moved up beside her and began to touch her. He said, “Put her on the deck and hold her. You can dump her over when I finish.” more tomorrow

I said, “Who are you, Raven No-name? Who threw you off that cruise ship, and why?”

Chapter Three

She started to protest, but I went on, “I was watching through binoculars when it happened.”

“Did you get a good look at them?”

“I could give a description: one was heavy and muscular, the other was skinny and short. But I couldn’t pick them out of a police line-up. They were too far away. Who were they?”

She shook her head and said, “I don’t know. I never saw either one of them before.” I thought she was telling the truth.

“Why did they do it?”

“I don’t know.”

“Okay, what other weird things are going on in your life?”

“I don’t know, it’s just . . .  My father is Daniel Cabral. He’s a state senator in California. He has someone on his staff that I thought might be dishonest. Daddy wouldn’t believe me, so I hired a private detective to check her out. But he didn’t find anything wrong.”

“You think he might had stirred this up?”

“I don’t think so. I don’t know. He was – kind of slimy.  Most P.I.s are, I guess.”

“Careful. I used to be one.”

“Really?”

“Sort of. I worked for a P.I. in San Francisco while I was in college. It was a part time thing. What else could account for what happened to you?”

“Nothing.”

“You aren’t an escaping Mafioso bride? Or the daughter of a drug kingpin? You didn’t find a secret treasure map in an old trunk in the attic?”

She laughed for the first time. She had a face made for laughter. 

“You’ll have to decide for yourself what I am. Everyone I know thinks I’m something different.” She folded her legs under her and the baggy jeans tried to conform to her curves, but there wasn’t enough of her to fill them. They remained shapeless, but I remembered those tan and lovely legs and I was having a little difficulty concentrating. “Daddy thinks I’m flighty and my sister thinks I exploit people.”

“What do you think?”

“I think I’m a pretty nice person,” she said, but she made it a challenge. Believe it or not. She was an odd one.

I said, “I believe you,” and refilled our coffee mugs.

The little cabin was cozy with the fire and the oil lamps reflecting off varnished wood. Raven was braced into a corner against the motion of the ship. The baggy jeans had drawn tight across the top of her thighs in this new position and her brown toes gripped at the side of a locker like blunt little fingers holding her in place. She worked a brush through the tangle of her heavy, black hair, wincing prettily when the brush stuck in rat’s nests.

I was having a little trouble breathing.

She stopped her brushing and said, “I think you are a pretty nice person, too. Thank you for treating me decently. Especially,” she grinned, “considering how I was dressed when you found me.”

“Tell me what happened, and what led up to it.”

“The big guy was named James Davis. Or so he said.”

“Jim Davis draws Garfield the Cat.”

“I know. Probably an alias, but not as obvious as John Smith.  He approached me in Bermuda the last night I was there. Used a pick-up line, made small talk in a bar, that sort of thing. I wasn’t interested so I turned him off, but I had a hard time getting loose from him. He said he had a car rented for one more day and wanted to give me a tour of the island. First I said no, then I made excuses, and finally I had to make a scene to get away from him.”

“Crazy jealousy? The revenge of a jilted lover?”

She shook her head. “It wasn’t like that. He was insistent, but the whole thing didn’t last ten minutes and I gave him no encouragement. Unless he was completely psychotic, it couldn’t be a motive for what he did. And it wouldn’t explain the second man.”

“Go on.” more tomorrow

The wind was still rising. It wouldn’t be long until it would be blowing a full gale, so I ran up the trysail, then furled the mizzen and moved forward to bring in the tiny foresail. I almost lost it overboard, but when I had finished, I could feel a difference in the way Wahini stood up to the wind.

We went below and I built a fire in the Shipmate. It hadn’t been lit since Will and I left San Francisco six months ago. Even if Bermuda was just over the horizon – in the wrong direction now and further away every minute – this storm had sent the temperature plummeting.

Raven had wrapped herself in a blanket. She looked lost and alone. I refilled her coffee cup and opened a can of soup. I set it on the Shipmate, then took the transom seat across from her.

“If you don’t talk soon,” I said, “you’re going to just break down and cry.”

“How long was I unconscious?” she asked.

“I don’t think you were ever unconscious. You were in shock from your immersion, and as soon as I got you on board you passed out, but I would just call it sleep. And you only slept about six hours.”

“But the storm . . .,” she gestured toward the overhead.

“This storm was already building when you went overboard. You would have noticed the signs if you had been on a small boat.”

Her eyes searched my face, but I couldn’t read their message.  She said, “Where are you taking me.”

“I tried all last night to sail toward Bermuda to put you ashore, but this storm is blowing in exactly the wrong direction. By the time we ride it out, it will be too late to turn back. I’m afraid you’ve signed on for the whole journey. I can put you ashore on the Azores or at Gibraltar, or you can come all the way to Marseille. It’s up to you.”

I let her think about it while I served up the soup. She balanced easily to the motion of the Wahini and ate it in neat little bites while I drank from the rim of my bowl. Then I stuck my head out of the hatch to scan the horizon. The ocean is wide, but there are a lot of ships out there. It is a thousand to one against ever colliding with one, but if it happens, it can be awfully fatal.

The Shipmate was glowing now, and the cabin was growing cozy.  Raven had laid aside her blanket. Will’s shirt and jeans were wide cuffed and baggy on her.

I said, “Who are you, Raven No-name? Who threw you off that cruise ship, and why?” more tomorrow

I struggled upright and took another drink of coffee.

“It belongs to me and my friend Will Hayden. He is in Marseilles now. We had planned to sail her over to Europe together, but he got called away. That’s why I’m alone out here. Was alone, that is, until you dropped in.”

Her eyes were dark and lovely, and the fear in them had increased. I said, “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Where are you taking me?”

“Where do you want to go? Bermuda?”

She wanted to slide further away from me, but there was nowhere to go and her grip on the blanket had become frantic. It made me angry. I said, “I didn’t risk my life saving you just so I could hurt you. I’ve told you you are safe. At least have the courtesy to pretend to believe me!”

I went forward to the drawers where Will’s things were stored. His clothing would be too big for her, but mine would swallow her completely. I brought her a pair of jeans, a wool shirt, a belt, and one of those plastic eggs like pantyhose come in.

I showed her the egg. “This is a one-size-fits-all string bikini. Some joker gave it to Will as a bon voyage present. It’s the closest thing I have to girls’ underwear. Pound on the hatch when you get dressed, but don’t take all day.”

The weather had gotten worse, but Wahini seemed to be happy with the sails as they were. I sat beside the lashed wheel and watched the compass card swing back and forth between east-north-east and east-south-east. The sky was darker than at sunrise. Behind us, there was no blue sky left. The sails were as hard and flat as boards, and the sheet trembled.

I was debating whether or not to dig out the storm trysail when Raven pushed back the hatch and stuck her head out. The wind grabbed her tangled hair and wrapped it around her face. She turned instinctively toward the wind to shake it out, and when she could see she said, “Oh, my God!”

For a moment I tried to see my world through her eyes. The southern sky was black, the sea was dead gray, and the wave tops were shattered, foaming infernos. Wahini was rail down, with water cascading alongside the cabin house and swirling around my sea boots. The mainsail was furled; the naked mainmast was cutting harsh circles against the low hanging clouds as Wahini plunged into troughs and corkscrewed her way up to the crests again. Only the tiny, reefed mizzen and a patch of canvas for a foresail were standing, slick with spray and hard as beaten copper.

She didn’t come on deck, but she didn’t retreat. She stood half in and half out of the cabin, drinking in the sight of the sea and the feel of the wind. I moved up beside her and shouted into her ear, “Don’t come any further out without a safety harness.”

Her eyes were glowing when she turned to me and she silently mouthed, “Magnificent!”

It was. So was she. more tomorrow

I had looked in on my mermaid several times during the night, and had tied up the restraints that would keep her from falling out of the bunk. Each time, she had been sleeping.

This time, she was awake. Her eyes were wide and dark, and frightened. I stood by her bunk and said, “Good morning. How long have you been awake.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know. I slipped in and out at first.”

“How do you feel?” She didn’t look good, but that may have been because Wahini’s new motion was something of a lift and wiggle, followed by a sick slide downward like a slow roller coaster. It seemed to have more effect here below than it had on deck.

She said, “Is this heaven or hell?”

“You be the judge. Coffee?”

She shook her head. I pumped up the stove and put a pot of water on to boil. Then I rummaged in the drawer that acted as medicine chest and returned to her.

“What is that?” she asked warily.

“A patch. I’ll put one behind your ear. It lets your skin slowly absorb a seasickness medicine. I’d give you a pill that works faster, but I’m afraid you might not be able to keep it down.”

She turned her head away and said, “You’re probably right.” I applied the patch.

I returned to making breakfast – a sailor’s eggnog of powdered milk, powdered egg, water, and a lot of sugar to kill the taste. I used it to wash down a couple of multi-vitamins, then rinsed the glass and moved up beside her again. I haven’t rescued many mermaids, but this one seemed awfully incurious.

And awfully scared.

I put my hand on hers and she flinched. I said, “You don’t have to be scared of me.” 

She said, “I’m naked.” Her hands clenched tighter on the blanket.

“Not quite.”

She blushed scarlet.

“Your nakedness is not my fault. You came to me that way. I just dragged you out of the water, dried you off, and put you to bed.”

I made coffee while she thought about it. Then I stuck my head out of the hatch for a look around. When I closed it again, the smell of coffee had filled up the little cabin.

She said, “That smells good.” I gave her a cup and loosened the canvas restraint that had kept her from flying out of the bunk in her sleep. She wedged herself into a corner formed by a locker, holding the blanket up with one hand, and took the coffee in the other.

I sat down across from her. She had reason to be scared. She didn’t know me, and she was about as vulnerable as anyone could ever be. No one knew she was here. I could rape her, kill her, and then drop her overboard. No one would know.

I wouldn’t, but she didn’t know that.

I said, “What’s your name?”

“Raven.”

“Raven what?”

“Just Raven.”

I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. It had been a long night. After a while, she asked, “Who are you?”

“Ian Alisdair Gunn.” I didn’t volunteer anything more. I was giving her time. I was also falling asleep.

She said, “Is this your boat?”

I struggled upright and took another drink of coffee. more tomorrow

It was April. Ayatollah Kohmeni had a few months left to live, and no one had yet heard of Osama ben Ladin. There were still two Germanies, two Berlins, and a wall; I had had my dealings with that wall a few years earlier, in uniform, when the cold war was even colder. If my guest went with me to Europe, I could show her around.

The wind tore a handful of salt water off the crest of a wave and threw it into my face. It got my attention, and the next fifteen minutes were devoted to reefing down. By the time I got back to the wheel, Wahini was moving under half of her canvas and laboring heavily. I had to pay her off another point to ease her motion, and that put Bermuda still further off our course.

          *          *         *

Six hours later, Bermuda was out of the question.

I had tried. I had spent an exhausting night fighting to windward, first on one tack, then another, but it was no use.  Wahini was never meant to slug it out to windward.

When the watery sun came up, it found me huddled in oilskins, with Wahini plunging into rising waves. Northward, the stars faded to a clear blue day, but in the direction of Bermuda the sky was black with the oncoming storm. Once there was proper light to see, the ocean was a white froth on every side.

I sheeted the mizzen flat, shook the reefs out of the mainsail and furled it properly, then spun the wheel. On a new course due eastward, toward Europe again, with only jib and mizzen drawing, Wahini’s motion was easier. I watched her on her new course for a few minutes, then went below.

*****

As I explained earlier this month in A Writing Life, Raven’s Run was written in the early 90s about events which purportedly took place in 1989. I added the first paragraph above during a recent rewrite. In 1989 I hadn’t heard of Osama ben Ladin.

The origin of Raven’s Run was ironic.  After a long time of unsuccessfully trying to market science fiction and fantasy, I decided to write something contemporary to make a sale. Raven’s Run was the result.  When I sent it to the agent I was using at the time, he praised it highly, then said that he couldn’t sell it because the bottom had completely fallen out of the market for that kind of fiction. My luck!

The story is tied to its era. It could not take place in today’s cell phone and Google Earth world, nor in the Eurozone. Ian Gunn fits his times because he was written during his times – after the cold war but before 9/11, an era fraught with danger, but also full of hope. Raven’s Run was designed to be the first in a series.

The events of the story simply would not have occurred the same way today that they did in 1989. There is no way it could be rewritten as if it took place in 2016. Instead I made a few small changes, like the first paragraph above and the prolog, which will allow me to treat it as a recent historical novel.